I believe that love is the greatest and most powerful of all human emotions. The passion of love is a driving force in our lives. We love our families, we fall in love with another and we know the love of friends. Many are searching for it, some wonder if they have truly found it. To love and to be loved is one of our greatest joys in life and something that we all long for.

I love these lyrics by Paul Weller. I think they explain what love can feel like so well. You know that you have encountered love when another person connects with you deeply. What they say or who they are does ‘something, somewhere deep inside’ of us. It moves us. We can’t always explain it or understand it, it isn’t just simply an attraction or the fact they make you feel good. You feel a deep connection to them – an intensity deep in your heart.

Over the years I have learnt that we feel love most when we love others. Yes, another’s love for us touches us deeply too, but we feel love most when WE LOVE. Sometimes I think we can convince ourselves that we feel love most when we are loved more. However, I believe that when the focus is on us, we actually feel love less.The passion and feelings of love come from OUR LOVE for someone else.

This is perhaps seen most beautifully when parents love their newborn children. That baby is not yet old enough to understand how to show us love, and yet we usually feel utterly overwhelmed and consumed by love. It is not because they enter into the world loving us, it is because WE LOVE THEM.

Love is like an energy Rushing in, rushing inside of me.– Frankie Goes To Hollywood ‘The Power Of Love.’

Love IS like an energy, a blazing fire within us that wants to be with that other person, to love and protect them, to care for and help them. It chooses to see the best in others.

The problem is if we wait to be loved FIRST we may never feel love. This is because love is always something that has to be given before it can be received. We cannot receive something that has not already been given.

Love is always bestowed as a gift – freely, willingly and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love. -Leo Buscaglia

This is one of the main problems in the world today. People are so very scared of getting hurt that they fear ‘giving love’ in case it is not reciprocated. They fear giving a deep part of themselves to then find that it has been trampled upon. Such is the world today – people are unsurprisingly suspicious of one another; there is little trust left. Love has been watered down to a fuzzy feeling and feelings can change with the wind.

However, the strongest relationships that have the potential to last the test of time are characterised by people choosing to bestow love as a gift.They love to love, not to receive love. This is when love is given in an atmosphere of grace. Grace gives EVEN when we don’t deserve it. True love is unconditional and selfless. It chooses to stay the long hall and gives up its own rights for another.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged.It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.The Bible **

What a challenge.

Do we really love like this?

It involves sacrifice.It requires endurance.It chooses to never give up.

And so the journey of love is not easy as I write about here. Love is not the fairy tale we are sold. Love must walk through many challenges. It leaves us open to hurt. Many of us have felt the pain of a broken heart when we loved and the other person walked away. That is one of the reasons our world is full of hate.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Love is daring. It takes risks. It does leave us vulnerable and open, because love is only love when it reaches out and touches deeply. That means there is always a chance that we might get hurt. However, what should we then do – say that we will never love again in order to protect ourselves? But if we never love again, we will not feel or enjoy the intensity of love again either.

There are a lot of things that touch me deeply inside my heart. Over the years I have developed a tender heart that feels love a lot. I have found the more you love, the more you feel love.I have decided to ‘make love my highest goal’ and to spread the aroma of love around – wherever I can, whenever I can, to whoever I can – because there is far too much negativity, criticism and hate in this world.

I want to be known as a person who ‘loved’. Someone that ‘touches others deeply’ because I dared to give love as a gift, unconditionally, whatever the response.

Yes, that does make me vulnerable (and I will always need wisdom to guard my heart so that I am not pulled into foolishness). Choosing to love is risky and I will sometimes find that my love is not reciprocated or it is even betrayed.

And it WILL hurt!

But I know a love more powerful than all other kinds of love, a love that will always cover over and heal my hurts. A love that is patient and kind, keeps no record of wrongs and never gives up on me – even when I mess up. It’s a love that touches me deep inside, like nothing else. With it’s beautiful, powerful, pure, unconditional nature. It lives within me ‘like an energy’ and flows out of me to others (if I let it). It is the love of Jesus – love in it’s most powerful form – because it is a love that models giving and sacrifice, a love that never fails and always endures.

It’s a love that is all powerful, all consuming and yet tender and full of grace.

It’s this love that shows me what love truly is. It makes it possible for me to keep on loving, even when it feels like I am getting little back. It drives me, gives me energy and helps me to love and respect others and see their needs as well as my own. All because that love found me first.

That is a love that I can ‘make my goal.’

When I felt suicidal at Christmas following an extremely difficult year of illness and felt unable to endure any more, I wrote the card pictured below to my husband and kids telling them how much I loved them. And as I read through the words… “Love bears ALL things, believes ALL things, hopes ALL things and endures ALL things..” they pierced my heart.

Love wouldn’t give up – love couldn’t give up. It had to keep on going, search for renewed hope and believe that things would get better.

That is the power of love.

Even amidst this very difficult season of my life, I’ve had to learn – even when I can’t do other things – I can still love and receive love.I can know that I am loved and allow that love to fill me again so it can flow through me to others – even when I feel completely broken.

Surely if that is the ‘highest goal’ and purpose of our lives then that is all we need.

So I hope I will always choose this way of love, even when it leaves me vulnerable, even when I have to endure. Because true love is more powerful and more incredible than we ever imagined.

And it is definitely worth living for.

*Verse from 1 Corinthians 14:1 in the NLT translation of the Bible

** Verses from 1 Corinthians 14:4-7 in the NLT translation of the Bible